State foggy on parenting laws

Anyone who entered their teenage years before the 1980s, especially as the oldest child in a family, developed a series of skill sets lost among today’s generation.

It’s a safe bet sorting, washing and ironing clothing is on the list. Cooking and cleaning are givens. It’s also likely babysitting siblings was a common occurrence.

Turns out that could have landed parents in a lot of hot water. Illinois law stipulates that a parent could be considered neglectful for leaving a child under the age of 14 without supervision.

Specifically, the law says that a minor under 14 cannot be left without supervision for “an unreasonable period of time without regard for the mental or physical health, safety, or welfare of that minor.”

It’s the question of what is considered an “unreasonable period of time” or what constitutes “regard for mental or physical health, safety or welfare” that has a lot of parents up in arms lately.

As the school year winds to a close, there will be a lot of teenagers spending time at home unsupervised. Many teenagers are already familiar with arriving home after school and having the house empty until the end of the workday.

Does that make every working parent a criminal? Of course not. The court system has more than a dozen criteria it uses to determine whether neglect actually exists.

But — and this is a large issue — those criteria are not applied until after a child has been removed from the custody of parents and the justice system becomes involved.

In the meantime, a child could be removed from his or her home if a state child welfare worker determines neglect exists.

It is not just an Illinois matter — although the state does have one of the most restrictive laws in the nation — that government officials operate with confusing and sometimes gray regulations to make determinations about what constitutes neglect.

A Maryland couple, for example, have become embroiled in a controversy with the state’s Child Protective Services for letting their children, a 6-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, make the mile-long walk to a park alone. Neighbors alerted authorities, who eventually were unable to determine any actual neglect. The parents argued they were deliberately allowing their children the freedom to gain self-reliance.

In Florida, a single mother was arrested because her son, who is 7, was allowed to walk to the park by himself to play. The park is about a half a mile away from his home.

There are certainly dangers that exist today that have been magnified in the years since most of us experienced childhood. Yet some parents argue children cannot be allowed to become so paralyzed by fears about what could happen that they cannot learn responsibility and critical skills about how to stay safe and secure on their own.

Thirty states have no age guideline as to when a child can be left alone. Other states set age guidelines — as young as 6 years old in the case of Kansas — but recognize there are a lot of extenuating factors that go into such a decision.

Surely a 13-year-old who has gone through basic first aid or babysitter training has the mental maturity to be alone or even watch others for several hours. Conversely, most people know an 18-year-old or two they wouldn’t trust being alone for any period of time.

There is no set age at which some sudden mental or physical transformation presents itself. Individual maturity is a matter that cannot be defined by a calendar and is a determination best made by parents.

The state should not rely on arbitrary ages and foggy definitions about matters as important as what determines good and bad parenting.